on't say
any more about it. I don't want to hear the word again."

Elizabeth did not know what to make of his words, so she said nothing,
and for a while they stood in strained silence. After a while he said,
"Aunt Hester wants me to be a preacher."

"I am so glad to hear that," she returned. "I think you 'll make a good
one."

"You too!" he exclaimed, resentfully. "Why should I make a good one?
Why need I be one at all?"

"Oh, because you 're smart, and then you 've always been good."

The young man was suddenly filled with disdain. His anger returned. He
felt how utterly out of accord he was with every one else. "Don't you
think there is anything else required besides being 'smart' and 'good'?"
He himself would have blushed at the tone in which he said this, could
he have recognised it. "I 'm smart because I happened to pass all my
examinations. I got through the high school at eighteen: nearly everyone
does the same. I 'm good because I have never had a chance to be bad: I
have never been out of Aunt Hester's sight long enough. Anybody could be
good that way."

"But then older people know what is best for us, Fred."

"Why should they? They don't know what 's beating inside of us away down
here." The boy struck his breast fiercely. "I don't believe they do know
half the time what is best, and I don't believe that God intends them to
know."

"I would n't talk about it, if I were you. I must go in. Won't you come
in with me?"

"Not to-night," he replied. "I must be off."

"But papa might give you some advice."

"I 've had too much of it now. What I want is room to breathe in once."

"I don't understand you."

"I know you don't; nobody does, or tries to. Go in, Lizzie," he said
more calmly. "I don't want you to catch cold, even if I do. Good-night."
And he turned away.

The girl stood for a moment looking after him; her eye was moist. Then
she pouted, "Fred 's real cross to-night," and went in.

It is one of the glaring sarcasms of life to see with what complacency a
shallow woman skims the surface of tragedy and thinks that she has
sounded the depths.

Fred continued his walk towards home. He was thinking. It ran in him
that Elizabeth was a good deal of a fool; and then he felt horrified
with himself for thinking it. It did not occur to him that the hard
conditions through which he had come had made him mentally and
spiritually older than the girl. He was thinking of his position, how
perfectly alo